#art needs a human connection

[so-sick-of-17]

Seriously?! There is a chat gbt Anderperry fic on ao3? Gag! Get that away from me. No one wants to see your disgusting chat gbt story. I can’t call it a work because no work was done and I can’t call it fanfic because how much of a fan could you possibly be if you don’t write it yourself. “I wanted to see a happier ending to the movie.” There are hundreds of stories you could have picked from that a real person actually created because they care about the characters. They are all infinitely better than anything a computer could have produced because they actually have a human connection and people who actually are capable of liking the movie and the characters. That tag is my happy place and it is tainted by that monstrosity. Normally I would be incredibly annoyed no matter the fandom, but for Dead Poets Society?! Really?! The movie about how art is tied with humanity?! Did you watch the movie?! Every single character would be disgusted by the use of ai to produce art. Art doesn’t exist without humanity and some cheep to imitation is an insult to anyone that actually works to make art.

[tobyisave]

obsolete

[shiraishi--kanade]

"It's so embarrassing to admit I only create art for validation" did paleolithic humans not paint for other humans to see. Does a child making their first drawing to show their parents makes it any less valuable. Do gardens arranged for the visitors' eyes make the roses any less beautiful. Do love poems written for one person alone to hear make your heart ache less. You're fine

[claitea]

i've had these scenarios written down since volo's debut in pokemon masters and i just really wanted to scribble them down and finally release them

[trustymikh]

open for better quality

I imagine Emperor's body is slowly morphing from flesh to that space matter that ancient caller Moira consists of. The armour is used as a sort of shell to help him stay in a humanoid form consistently

[thefloatingstone]

I really want to draw something meaty and put some characters into The Situations but I am dealing with a double whammy of art block and some REALLY insane migraine/Sinus issues the past 3 or 4 days.

So all I managed was a quick Solana. I wanted to give her a cool leg prosthetic but then I didn't really draw her legs sdjfdsjkfsdhf So that's the level of cognitive function I am dealing with at the moment

Fun fact! I really dislike a lot of the female turian design! So I just... ignored the parts I disliked lol.

[chewysgummies]

[[WIP; CONCEPT ART]]

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Hm, better than the few couple attempts I made. I'll admit.

[berryblooo]

We’re about to get the 1.2 update and finally learn some more about the tumultuous past between Dan Heng, Blade, Jing Yuan, and Jingliu but god if I’m not more than a little happy for the first three that they’ve found a new community and family after their previous one was lost.

Dan Heng has the Express crew.

My hope for him in the story is that he has a moment where he realizes how much they’ve come to mean to him. He’s been so focused on running from his past that maybe he forgets to cherish the present.

Jing Yuan is the general for the Luofu. The whole ship looks to him for leadership.

He’s no longer that little boy looking to his master for guidance. He has Yanqing, Fu Xuan, Yukong, Tingyun—the whole Luofu.

Blade has the Stellaron Hunters.

It can be seen as purely transactional. Blade is a useful weapon and they’ll give him what he desires: death. But the little details the story sprinkles in—Kafka calling him Bladie, him accompanying Silver Wolf to arcades—shows that there’s fondness too.

I highlighted these three specifically because I don’t know if or think that Jingliu has found something else since the quintet.

Her appearance in Yanqing’s quest leads me to believe otherwise. She and Blade are very similar—struck with Mara and having certain ways to control it, yet all the more disconnected from reality and dangerous for it.

But the crucial difference is Blade has people he can rely on. It’s clear the Stellaron Hunters take care of each other in their own unorthodox way, even if it’s just following Elio’s script.

Jingliu doesn’t.

TL;DR found family matters. Those four were once family and their most important connections, then it fell apart.

Three of them have managed to find other people in their grief and it makes all the difference.

[wodniars-void]

Do you guys wanna hear about my little au where Subject X (Skuld) and Bragi's ghost become friends?

They're the "what the heck happened to you kids" gang :3

[axel-tiredstudent]

Spoiler for the next au character hehe

I might delete this in a while + no reblogs

[starlingstalk]

Who defines living anywayssssss

[squisheebugdoodles]

art is sometimes about sobbing over a song so hard that you decide to put it on repeat while you make a painting dedicated to forming a concentrated drop of that emotion on the canvas

[ianthedebonair]

I am looking respectfully at your Hollow Ground 😳 What do u think Damien's relationship with him is gonna be? 💞💖

I've been breaking HG's nose for the majority of my playthroughs for the hell of it. But I loved going deep into his mind and go fishing for a moray so I'm thinking to have that over in my save state.

Damien will definitely be curious about what happened and wouldn't be able to keep a mystery like that unsolved. If HG still seeks Damien's partnership in Book 3 (which I hope he still does), Damien would be inclined to agree in order to take advantage of HG's resources, investigate their connection, and maybe do a bit of spying for our local glorified power bank (he did promise to help after all).

What might bite him in the ass, however, is whether HG would pursue a more familial relationship with Damien...

He'd be a fool not to take advantage of their sort-of blood connection to further infiltrate HG's ranks. Getting buddy-buddy with HG might make him feel like he's wearing a dead person's skin and living their life, but he's always been good at playing roles (plus it's HG, so no harm, no foul when Damien ends up betraying him). The problem is if Damien would end up actually liking the role he's playing.

He had to act human to fulfill his missions and liked it a bit too much that he escaped The Farm. He didn't really trust the previous Rangers and Ortega all those years ago, yet he became comfortable playing hero, and now the loss of what he once had still hunts him. He swore never to make contact to the Rangers again but is now playing the role of a disillusioned retiree a bit too well and is being dangerously comfortable in their headquarters. He also planned to keep his relationship with Dr. Mortum purely transactional, yet now Jane and the good doctor are literal besties and drinking buddies.

If Hollow Ground wanted Damien to play the role of his brother and fall into the trap of finding a connection that makes him feel human, how would this be any different?

[dykethevvitch]

I imagine it was quite the adjustment

[lulu2992]

The first kiss 💕

In the hours that followed the meeting at the 8-Bit Pizza Bar, the news of John being alive reached everyone’s ears in Hope County… including Joseph’s who contacted the Junior Deputy the instant he knew, late in the evening, and requested to see the little brother he thought he had lost. He and Taylor agreed on a truce and that he would visit them the next day. Approximately 24 hours later, she anxiously drove to his compound to pick him up, but his calm demeanor and the fact he apparently trusted her enough to get into her car alone surprised her. When Joseph was finally reunited with John (who had insisted he needed a shirt for the occasion), he hugged him tightly, and Taylor decided to wait outside so they could talk in private in the small bunker she now called home. The Father came out of it moments later, visibly relieved, and told her John would only return to his Family the next morning because there was “no rush” and, that way, they could “sort everything out”.

The Deputy was a bit confused but, as it happened, “sort everything out” they did.

I had 11 “old” drawings to post and this is the 6th one; I’m getting there! My computer says this file is exactly one year old today :)

[miirshroom]

Shadow of the Erdtree - "Pure and Radiant, He Wields Love to Shrive Clean the Hearts of Men"

"Shriver" is an occupational title meaning "scribe" or "writer" and comes from the root "Shrive" which originally meant "to decree, pass judgement, prescribe, hear or receive a confession (of sins), free from guilt, to absolve" and later came to mean "write".

So keeping in mind that the concept of Words have literal Power is part of the Golden Order faith in Elden Ring (see Coded Sword or Cipher Pata), when Miquella is in the Lands of Shadow to "Shrive clean the hearts of men", his goal is to either literally or metaphorically write a narrative that cleans the hearts of men. So, what does it mean to "clean a heart"? Metaphorically it seems like a term for absolving sins, but it can take on another meaning when read more literally.

Because of course this has come up before on the internet I searched the origin of the phrase "hearts of men" and received: the Battle Hymn of the Republic. An American ('Marikan) Civil War song with lyrics written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in 1861.

... He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat; Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! Be jubilant, my feet! Our God is marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Glory, glory, hallelujah! Our God is marching on. In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on.

The only notes I want to make for that last stanza is that it is interesting that Christ is associated with lilies in this particular song when that is also Miquella's flower. And that Miquella (and Mohg, and Radahn) certainly died to reach the Shadowlands in a classic set up of Death and Resurrection that fails to complete the resurrection bit.

At least two biblical passages provide context/inspiration for the poetic phrasing about hearts (again: internet is full of people discussing the meanings behind works of art and poetry):

Romans 2:15 “the requirements of the law are written on their hearts”.

Revelation 2:23 “I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds.”

So thinking of shriving in terms of writing is not so farfetched, and also there's some end of days style judgement happening with all the horn sounding (that being the theme of Revelations).

Grading Gravel Stone with Sieves

The technique of "sifting" is used in geotechnical engineering to separate particles of rock and sand into sizes, where the smallest size of sand and silt or clay is what passes through a #200 sieve with opening size of 75 µm. The first step is to prepare a tower of sieves of various sizes - say ranging from 1/2" to 75 µm openings - and add to the top a sample of soil baked to zero moisture content, and then shake them vigorously until all fine particles settle to the bottom. The fineness of the resulting silt below the lowest sieve can be further determined by agitating a sample in a water column and watching a hydrometer (a buoyant instrument) to see how long it takes the particles to settle. 

Clayey soil causes problems - it sticks in crevasses of bigger rocks and forms clumps that do not pass through the #200 sieve. However, in some case a fine particle analysis is not required, so the solution is a setup that continuously runs water through the sieves during the shaking of the tower to wash fines clean from the coarse particles. Or if you work in a low budget lab like I did, just stand at the sink and smoosh the clay around with fingers until it goes through the mesh.

The point being that in the metaphor the material of "coarse" hearts are sifted out and exposed while that of exceptionally "fine" hearts pass judgement of the final sieve and are washed through with the water. And while in the real world the "fineness" of a heart is subjective, in Elden Ring this becomes quite literal: dragon hearts have been shown over and over again to be ridged in coarse gravel stone. Like, when you get a dragon heart and literally "clean the heart" of all of the blood that obscures detail, this is what is exposed:

Dragon heart seized by a dragon tracker. Riddled with Gravel Stone, this grotesque organ continues to beat vivaciously. An offering used in the Dragon Communion. Consume a dragon's heart at the altar to make its power yours. While a terrible and savage-looking thing, the heart has a peculiar beauty to it.

And the quote about Miquella shriving clean the hearts of men originates from Ansbach, who finds this concept terrifying. And as described in the Wise Man's Mask, "an old fear lurks beneath...the appearance of a quiet, wise, old, bearded man", so it's a personal terror rather than the abstract thought that somebody should be terrified about this. Being "absolved of their sins" by a loving deity is usually not something that sparks fear in a person - if anything it's supposed to be cathartic in the sense of having successfully appeased God. So Ansbach fears being judged and found inadequate. In other words, the fear of Ansbach is that the hearts of "men" will have all fine facades washed away from their surface, exposing the coarse stony hearts not unlike savage, bestial dragons. 

Man vs. God

But good news: if man does not want to be judged, then he must simply kill god! After all, the final words of Ansbach are "Righteous Tarnished. Become our new lord. A lord not for gods, but for men."

There's another more modern song to the same tune as the Battle Hymn of the Republic - an American paratrooper song dating to World War 2 known as "Blood on the Risers":

... The ambulance was on the spot, the jeeps were running wild The medics jumped and screamed with glee, they rolled their sleeves and smiled For it had been a week or more since last a 'Chute had failed And he ain't gonna jump no more Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die Glory, glory, what a hell of a way to die He ain't gonna jump no more ... There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the chute Intestines were a-dangling from his paratroopers suit He was a mess, they picked him up, and poured him from his boots And he ain't gonna jump no more Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die Gory, gory, what a hell of a way to die He ain't gonna jump no more

Glory to God isn't in the song any more, only gore, and the idea that "hell" is not something for an afterlife but experienced right here in the present (and there are medics - hello Varré). The "god" in question being not Miquella, but Marika who was previously keeping the Omen such as Mohg and his pureblood faction in check and set the conditions for their release with her disappearance. It's not really better when a god dies without any functional structure in place to fill the power vacuum. More of a lateral shift from a belief that killing is for the glory of God to the grim disillusionment of seeing that people die in viscerally brutal ways to advance whatever flimsy ideologies men can invent to justify capturing control of resources. 

Sowing and Reaping

And while that would be a decent sentiment to end on in a discussion about a real history and the rise of secularism - I can dig deeper. This is a video game and the characters unquestionably have a Creator in the form of the writer. So a certain proverb of biblical origin can apply here quite literally - "you reap what you sow". Ansbach wields the "Obsidian Lamina" a scythe like what would traditionally be used for reaping grain. People who Ansbach can potentially "reap" with this scythe via combat:

Needleknight Leda

Dryleaf Dane

Freyja (if she is given Ansbach's letter)

Moore (if you advise "put it behind you" to the question "Our mother abandoned her brood. She did not love us. We are her children, what should we do? Must we be sad forever?")

Hornsent (if you deny him vengeance or snub him after helping with that vengeance)

Miquella and Consort Radahn. 

Why should Ansbach fear the judgement of Miquella except that he knows that in some way his actions have sowed the lust for violence toward himself from all of these people? And now it has come time to reap them if he wants to survive without compromising on his irrational loyalties to the Lord of Blood. I don't think it's necessary to speculate on all of them except this: Ansbach did cleave open Miquella and wound him with a Furious Blood Blade. Leda saw it happen.

I’m afraid Sir Ansbach will have to be next. He insist that he’s nothing but a worn down, over-the-hill soldier. But in his day, he was the feared commander of the Pureblood Knights, who cleaved open Miquella the Kind with his blood blade. He claims he hasn’t the spirit to take up his sword again, but I doubt it’ll be very long… Before he recalls, as I have, the cascading sheets of blood. I’m afraid he cannot be left to fester…

This seems to contradict directly Ansbach's own claim - but unlike Leda's specific recollection (the description for "Furious Blood Blade of Ansbach" even uses the word "cleave") he never said with which blade was he unable to reach Miquella. His scythe couldn't reap Miquella yet. All he had done at first contact was to sow the seed of despair with his bloody assault. Even more poignant that Needle Knight Leda was present as witness considering that she is themed around a different kind of sewing.

But here's the thing about fiction. Miquella isn't really Ansbach's god in a divine sense - that would be the Creator FromSoftware. Miquella having discarded so much of himself is basically on the level of a straw man argument that people who plea for kindness are all really thought-policing monsters. You know. Straw. A grassy plant that is sown from seed and may perhaps be reaped by scythe. Like the new straw/hay bale asset found in the DLC villages that was not present in the base game.

People have throughout history invented gods to explain natural phenomena and obsessed over making up stories about them. Inventing a caricature/phantasm of a person to do mental combat against is just a more mundane version of that. And like I've said previously - the DLC takes place in the body/mind of the withered corpse in the cocoon.

Like, to be clear, the set up of the straw man argument above is that I say "I really don't trust the faction who are themed around blood exultation and glorifying wounds and pain" and the straw man response might be "so you trust the god who wants to use mind control to make everyone be nice to each other??". Which is what the Mogh vs. Miquella argument seems to be reduced down to sometimes. No, I think that dwelling on the possibility of mind-control is a pit of paranoia, and that if the blood faction stopped polluting their own water sources with blood and fantasies about a glorious dynasty then maybe they would be able to calm the fuck down. Get some basic needs for sustenance and safety satisfied to then have the time and energy for introspection. Gain perspective on how they've been radicalized by doctored narratives.

Including the phantasm of the violent and mind-controlling god who "shrives clean the hearts of men" and must be stopped before he can enforce a new narrative where kindness is the default and being exposed for having a coarse/uncivil nature is a faux pas to be weighed and judged along a graded scale of severity. Remove the part about "violent and mind-controlling god" and that basically sounds like the ideal that most rational people wish we already had from civil society.

So the thoughts about violence under a mind-controlling god is pure projection - the idea that there must be a terrifying caveat to any attempt at Kind governance. But really, the Blood Dynasty faction is just reaping what they sow:

Governed by a God? Mohg has always been deferring to gods - first Marika, then the outer god of the Formless Mother, so in a twisted way Miquella must be a god as well. Mohg and his Sanguine Nobles also in their design take clearest inspiration from the type of embroidered stole as worn by the Catholic Pope.

Mind-controlling? To believe in an omnipotent God is to believe that God knows your most private thoughts. Always. And is always judging you on the correctness of those thoughts. So you must be sure to think the correct thoughts, and obey the letter of the holy text and the guidance of the priesthood. Also, just try to think rationally when in excruciating chronic pain, as the Formless Mother espouses.

Violent? Yep.